The Euclid "dark universe" probe's ailing vision has been restored after an experimental deicing campaign successfully evaporated ice from the telescope's mirrors, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Tuesday (March 26).
Ice layers as wide as a single DNA strand had collected on Euclid's mirrors, causing a small but progressive decrease in the amount of starlight the telescope was capturing, the agency said last week. So, scientists began "deicing" Euclid for the first time — from a million miles away — by heating one of its six mirrors that they strongly suspected was causing much of the issue.
